Long-term Lesbian relationships….lets start telling the truth

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Lesbian Bed Death: Part 1

I’ve always had a problem with this title. Lesbian Bed Death (LBD), like people don’t already think we are frumpy enough, without adding in a catchy branded title for our relationship failures.

Here comes my opinion

On the one hand… I think its a bit of media myth. Lots of people find that in long term relationship sex becomes harder to fit in and therefore less frequent, this is not a uniquely Lesbian problem…its just a homophobic media/society that like to paint it that way. On the other hand, every lesbian couple that I know who has been together longer a few years will discuss differences in desire (often to do with frequency), and say that they are having less sex than when they got together.

Here is some interesting research which has some facts in it.

First bit of research….

“In 1982, sociologists Pepper Schwartz and Philip Blumstein published American Couples: Money, Work, Sex, the first major study of its kind to compare gay male, lesbian, and heterosexual couples on basic issues such as sex, communication, and money. Among many other findings, their research showed that lesbian couples had less frequent sex than anyone else. And thus was born the trope of “lesbian bed death.””

Taken from http://www.goodtherapy.org/blog/truth-about-lesbian-bed-death-its-complicated-1210134. accessed on 13/10/2014.

So that’s where the idea originated. However…second bit of research…

A more recent piece of research by Dr. Karen Blair has been done into sexual well-being.The research was completed with a very large sample of each population (800 plus), the academic article on this is fascinating (IMHO). This research concentrates on satisfaction and types of sexual contact, and orgasms rather than just on frequency. I have summarised the findings but basically;

Lesbians have less sex than gay men or heterosexuals, but they were having longer sexual encounters (1 – 2 hours rather than 30 minutes), and lesbians were the most likely group to report both parties having an orgasm.

Full reference: Blair, K and Pukall, C. Can less be more? Comparing duration vs. frequency of sexual encounters in same-sex and mixed-sex relationships,The Canadian Journal of Human Sexuality23(2), 2014, pp. 123–136

Interesting this also ties in with my experience of chatting to my lesbian friends in long term relationships, the things they say.

When we do it, its really good

Its really hard to find time

So in theory we are having less frequent but more intense sex than other people, and we do it for longer.